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Fan translation

People hoped for years that Nintendo would deign to release Fire Emblem 6: Fuuin No Tsurugi (FE6) on shores outside of Japan. They didn't. Since a conveniently long amount of time had passed, it was up to us to take matters into our own hands.

”

— The "DTN Translation Division"

A fan translation is, in the context of video games, an unofficially translated version of a video game, usually created by a fan or fans of the game in question. Fan translations of console games are almost universally accomplished by modifying a ROM image of the game in question by way of hacking, then creating a patch for a clean ROM image which applies the fan translation. The end result is then played on an emulator program, like a normal ROM image, or for those with the ability to do so, can be transferred into a game copier cartridge to be used on the game's native hardware.

In the Fire Emblem series, fan translations are particularly important, as only seven of the fourteen games have so far been given official international releases; combined with the sheer age of the games in question, using ROM images is often the only option. While there are generally numerous patches of various ages available for each game, they vary drastically in quality, and as such there is one translation for each game which is widely considered to be "the" translation to use. As of March 2017, all eight Japan-only games have functional fan translation patches which provide a near-complete translation of the game's script; in some patches, there remain elements (mainly graphical text) which have yet to be translated.

It should be noted that the possession of ROM images of video games is illegal. While prosecution over possessing them is highly unlikely and has never happened before, you do so at your own risk. For this reason, Fire Emblem Wiki will neither host ROM images, nor point in the direction of them; as it stands, they are easy enough to find without assistance. Fire Emblem Wiki encourages readers to support the official releases of these games, should they ever occur in the future.

Ironically, the original NES Shadow Dragon and the Blade of Light was the last of the pre-Fire Emblem games to be given a serious attempt at a fan translation; this was largely because of the existence of Mystery of the Emblem and later Shadow Dragon rendering the game obsolete and unnecessary in the eyes of many. For a long time, all that existed were a number of scattered and rudimentary efforts, with none approaching a complete product and plagued with errors. As such, it was not until 2010 that a translation attempt was announced by Quirino.[1] The patch was completed comparatively soon after, in February 2011.

Though the patch is claimed by Quirino to be only 99% complete, the translation is entirely complete and operational. The names used in the translation are the same as those used in the Mystery of the Emblem translation, the most common unofficial names for the characters before the release of Shadow Dragon; Quirino has stated, however, that in the next revision of the patch he releases, the names will be changed to be in line with the official names from Shadow Dragon.[2]

After the project laid dormant for a few years, Serenes Forest user Mega Koopa X began work on a patch to update the names in the patch to official ones used in Shadow Dragon. It also fixes several typos and glitches caused by the original patch, as well as including a new font. The patch is in open beta as of February 2016.[3]

Like the NES Shadow Dragon and the Blade of Light, Gaiden was one of the more neglected games in terms of fan translation for many years. Though several translation patches existed, none were complete and possessed many other problems. With this in mind, a complete patch was released by Artemis251 in 2009, commenced in September and completed within a month.

In June 2016, Serenes Forest user Gaiden Guy began work on an update to the Gaiden patch by Artemis251. The patch updates all names to their official localizations revealed in Awakening. It also fixes some minor glitches and errors such as the "Full inventory" message. As of February 2016, the patch is at version 0.9, with the credits being the only thing unfinished.

Gaiden Guy has expressed interest in completely redoing the patch for Gaiden "to clean up some of the awkward text and make it so that spell names and character names are able to fit without looking squished/having to be cut off".[4]

A fan translation for Mystery of the Emblem was completed in 2008, translated by VincentASM with hacking by RPGuy96. The patch is far from perfect - the translation is rough, menu text is not translated in numerous places, and there are numerous glitches (for example, attempting to use the Geosphere will crash the game). Though there are numerous problems with the patch, it cannot be updated - VincentASM has stated on several occasions that since RPGuy96 has all but disappeared, so too have the tools to modify the patch, and there is no chance of him being able to update the patch. VincentASM went on to work on the fan translation for this game's remake, New Mystery of the Emblem.

After gaining permission from VincentASM in 2012, Quirino eventually started work on revising and updating the Mystery of the Emblem patch in 2014, relying entirely on editing the raw code. Revisions will mostly be text based, as the character names are adjusted to match the official PAL Shadow Dragon names (Quirino mentioned a possibility of releasing a separate patch with the North American names after the patch is complete) and the fan names used in the New Mystery of the Emblem translation, but will also include a more aesthetically pleasing narrow font. As of August 2014, the script of Book 1 has been near-completely reformatted to accommodate for the new font, and various previously untranslated elements have been implemented.[5]

Genealogy of the Holy War was the first Fire Emblem game to receive a fan translation. The earliest translation was started in 2000[6] by the group j2e Renegade, with its last release under this group being in 2002;[7] however, it was left vastly incomplete with many issues, described by the creators as "not to be enjoyed".[8] At some point, the group died and their website (http://fe4trans.freeshell.org/) became defunct; after several years of other efforts to try and fix its problems, DarkTwilkitri picked up the patch and updated it to fix some of its problems, calling his patches "Reparation". The last of these releases was "Reparation 0.87d", in December 2006; afterward he admitted to losing interest in further developing the patch.

On April 6, 2012, years after the release of the previous version, Twilkitri released a new version of the patch, "Reparation 0.87e".[9] In addition to fixing a number of bugs and errors, its main purpose was to bring the patch into consistency with official English releases of the series. Two further revisions were since been released, with the final release being "Reparation 0.87g".[10] As Twilkitri is Australian, the translation script uses Australian English spellings, such as "Armour Knight". In May 2013, as Twilkitri has not yet updated the patch to reflect the Awakening international release, a fork revision of the patch was produced by Serenes Forest user Gharnef, taking the "Reparation 0.87g" release and updating it to use the Awakening name changes and to revert other names to the Nintendo of Japan official romanizations.[11]

Independently of this, a new retranslation project arose in 2013 seeking to produce a more polished patch, now known as "Project Naga". The patch was released as a public beta in May 2016, on the 20th anniversary of the original release of Genealogy, becoming the first complete translation patch. The "Project Naga" translation features a total, polished retranslation of the script (including the previously unfinished epilogue) which aims for greater accuracy to the original script, a new, slimmer font (based on the font used by EarthBound[12]) which allows for much more text to fit into the windows, and also fixes numerous glitches from the original game. The game was primarily translated by Serenes Forest user bookofholsety, who spent nearly three years working on the script, while the patch was programmed by DDSTranslation, whose prior fan translation work includes Kyuuyaku Megami Tensei. The patch is still in open beta as of May 2016.

A basic menu translation patch of the first episode of Archanea War Chronicles was released by joesteve1914 in late 2014. The patch reuses English font assets from the Mystery of the Emblem patch, and is compatible only with the SNESGT emulator. He stated at this time that he might have produced patches for the remaining three episodes in the time before work on Thracia 776 properly began.

After almost two years of dormancy, the patch for the first episode received an update that translated all of the dialogue. It contained a few glitches having to do with wrong portraits being displayed and the font being spaced out due to a variable-width font not being implemented yet.

Though work had begun on episode two, with almost all menus translated, the patch went seven more months without any updates. joesteve1914 officially cancelled the project in February 2017. He revealed that he had planned to implement a restoration of the games introduction sequence and soundtrack, but this was made impossible due to the ROMs not running in any SNES debugger. Citing that the game is better experienced in its FE12 remake if it is missing these key features, joesteve1914 said he is interested in returning to the project if they are made compatible with a debugger.[13]

There are three current patches of note for Thracia 776, each with a different focus. The first and lesser-known one is a menu patch by Luxifer Angel, last updated in 2003, which translates only the menu text and leaves the dialogue untouched.[14] The other, later and primary patch was the work of Shaya; this patch is something of the opposite to the Luxifer Angel patch, in that it fully translates the game's script, but some of the menus are left untranslated and in a questionable state. It was last updated in 2008, with Shaya claiming no intent to do so again because of the interference of life. In recent times, the Shaya translation has been criticized for its lacklustre and often erroneous script, gratuitous and out-of-place references to internet fads (for example, Kempf spontaneously declaring "IN AMERICA!" in Chapter 11), the poor quality of its menu translations (such as a majority of options being displayed as garbled text), and for the bugs of various degrees of severity caused by the above errors.

There are tentative plans for the Project Naga team to eventually create a new patch after completing their work on Genealogy; so far, this project has progressed no further than preliminary hacking experiments by DDSTranslation.[15][16]

In June 2017, ChimeraHardline posted a new menu translation patch on the Fire Emblem subreddit[17]. This patch is similar to the Fire Emblem: Genealogy of the Holy War patch by Project Naga in that it has a VWF for all menu items. ChimeraHardline has announced that he intends to insert a translated script in his patch at some point in the future.

At the time, coming off the heels of the attention garnered by Roy's appearance in Super Smash Bros. Melee and the international release of Fire Emblem, it was assumed and hoped by some that an official translation of The Binding Blade would soon follow. When such a release failed to eventuate, a fan translation project began, developed by DarkTwilkitri's "DTN Translation Division". The patch was first released in 2005 under the title Sword of Seals, with development continuing until 2007 and the last stable release being distributed in 2006; progress ended in 2007 when the members of the team found less and less time to work on the project.

The translation was largely complete in its last release, albeit in a relatively primitive state. This led to a revision project in 2013 by gringe of the Serenes Forest forums, an experienced manga translator. The project, now calling the game by its modern name The Binding Blade, retranslated and rewrote the script, cleaned up the graphics and other facets of the patch's presentation, and implemented official name changes from Fire Emblem Awakening, intending to result in a more polished patch. The patch is complete for all practical purposes and features a bevy of newly-translated features, including the game's class roll and the opening narration; remaining bugs and presentation issues were fixed in a final 1.0 release.[18]

New Mystery of the Emblem is the first game since international releases of the series began to not be released internationally. While it was initially expected that it would be, this expectation was not met, and so one year following the Japanese release, prominent Fire Emblem hacker Blazer convened a team of translators, editors and hackers to do a fan translation, calling themselves the "Heroes of Shadow"; the team was later led by VincentASM as Blazer had to leave to contend with real-life issues. The team's goal with the patch was to create a complete and highly polished translation and localization on par with the official Shadow Dragon release. A preliminary menu patch was released on July 15th, 2011, near-completely translating menus and names, while leaving dialogue untouched, and no further releases were issued until the translation was 100% complete, bug-tested and polished,[20] with the first "complete" release occurring on November 21st, 2012.[21]

From even before it became evident that a fan translation would be necessary, the patch's development progress was profiled on the Heroes of Shadow blog. For a time, in addition to the blog, the patch's progress was also maintained in a thread on Serenes Forest, allowing for ease of discussion on the matter; however, eventually the thread was closed as it was dominated by an endless argument about name changes, mainly "Belf" to "Vergil" and "Malliesia" to "Malicia".[22] The controversy surrounding the "Vergil" name has been extensively mocked and parodied by members of the Serenes Forest community, and the act of satirically suggesting changing a name to "Vergil" in fan translation has evolved memetically and regularly appears in the efforts to clean up the Genealogy of the Holy War, Thracia 776 and The Binding Blade translations.

Even though some names in the patch have been officially localized in Awakening (for example, Roro->Legion), the Heroes of Shadow have said that they have no plans currently to release an updated patch due to other commitments.

In February 2017, joesteve1914, after cancelling his translation project of BS Fire Emblem: Archanean War Chronicles, began work on an update to the New Mystery of the Emblem patch. The patch will update all names in the game to their officially localized versions as seen in Awakening and the smartphone game, Fire Emblem Heroes. It will also fix a myriad of typos and inconsistencies in the original patch, as well as include newly rewritten dialogue (mostly Legion's, to match his dialogue from Fire Emblem Awakening and Fire Emblem Heroes and was initially planned for release in March 2017. It was then moved to a planned release in May 2017 in anticipation of any changes the localization of Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows of Valentia may make that affect this game.[23] The patch eventually did not meet the May 2017 deadline for it's initial release, but a Beta version was implemented in order to fulfill the deadline in some form. This eventually turned out to be for the best, as the release of the Echoes of Mystery banner and paralogue occurred soon after the deadline passed. This lead to many more names being localized officially for the first time in English, including Reese, whose name and how to render it to match Clarisse was debated among patch contributors heavily prior to her localization as Reese. A new title screen matching Shadow Dragon's style was eventually contributed by Kenthos, after it was observed that the Japanese logos for Shadow Dragon and New Mystery of the Emblem were effectively the same logo recolored.

This section has been marked as a stub. Please help improve the page by adding information.

A fan translation project for Fire Emblem Fates was started in 2015. Calling themselves "Team If"[24], the group started working on the patch due to the several months between the release of Fire Emblem Fates in Japan and the rest of the world. Upon Nintendo's revealing that some features would be cut from the game in the localized release (such as the infamous skinship minigame), Team If reaffirmed its commitment to releasing a complete English patch for Fire Emblem Fates.

The initial project was cancelled in March 2016,[25] but the patch received an update by a different team in December 2016 who used the same name.[26][27]

This section has been marked as a stub. Please help improve the page by adding information.

After the Japanese version of the game leaked online, a fan translation patch for Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows of Valentia was released on April 3, 2017 by SciresM. It translates the menus, character, class, and item names, as well as some descriptions.[28]
It has since been rendered obsolete by the official worldwide release of the game.